Science newsWe finally solved the mystery of how potatoes evolvedBy Josh DavisFirst published 31 July 2025Crisps and mash owe their existence to a series of precise events that took place nine million years ago. That is the startling finding of a new study that has found that potatoes are the result of an ancient hybridisation event. We’ve got an ancient hybridisation event in the foothills of the Andes to thank for the humble spud. That is the remarkable new finding from a team of researchers who have finally figured out the origin of the potato. They have discovered that the first ancestors of the staple root vegetable likely appeared some time around nine million years ago, when ancestors of today’s tomato plants hybridised with those of another group of relatives known as the Etuberosum. From this event, the early potatoes were able to form underground tubers which allowed them to rapidly diversify and eventually form over a hundred different species that we know of today. What is most astonishing about this, however, is that the researchers were able to show that this ability to create tubers was not possible without specific genetic information from each of the parent species. “Our findings show how a hybridization event between species can spark the evolution of new traits, allowing even more species to emerge,” explains Sanwen Huang, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China, who led the research. “We’ve finally solved the mystery of where potatoes came from.” The paper describing the hybridisation event has been published in the journal Cell. The wild diversity of potatoes Potatoes are one of the world’s most important crops. Along with wheat, maize and rice, they are estimated to account for up to 80% of all calories eaten by people worldwide. But the simple spud you can pick up in the supermarket is just one species of a highly diverse group of plants. There are around 140 species of wild potato in South America, growing from M...
First seen: 2025-08-10 04:41
Last seen: 2025-08-10 15:43